Welcome to Truth Talk Live. All right, let's talk. A daily program powered by the Truth Network. This is kind of a great thing and I'll tell you why. Where pop culture, current events, and theology all come together.
Speak your mind. And now, here's today's Truth Talk Live host. Good afternoon, Truth Talk listeners. This is Alicia and I'm here today with Jen Crowder. I can't wait for you to meet her. She has so many wonderful things to share and things that she's been doing over the past few years. I met her maybe two or three years ago.
That's another story through our church. I was doing a Bible study and she was doing a similar one and we kind of decided to get together and talk about it. And I went to her house and after an hour, I'm like, Oh, I like I like this. I like this young woman.
She's just God's done a lot in her life. And so I'm going to let her introduce herself. Jen, tell us tell our listeners a little bit about you. Whatever you'd like to share.
Hey, thanks so much for having me on Alicia. My name is Jen. So I have been married for a little over 11 years to my husband, Johnny. We have four kiddos 763 and one so everyone says we're busy and we are but we love it.
I work part time as a physical therapist. And what else do you did you want me to say my spiritual background? Sure. Yeah, tell tell us about your story. Yeah, I grew up in church. And I grew up in a Methodist Church. I had awesome parents who took me we did, you know, midweek Bible study went on Sundays. But I kind of didn't I'm not sure I became a Christian until my freshman year of college.
I had a roommate. Her name is Tabitha. And she the way she talked about Jesus was different than I had heard before.
Because she talked about him like she knew him. And I said, Oh, that's interesting, you know, and she kind of showed me what it looked like to walk with God. So I think from the it's kind of from that point on, I hit a point where I was interested in reading the Bible, I was I started to be convicted about my sin. And so I feel like that's kind of, that's kind of my background. I mean, there's a lot of mountains and valleys along the way. But yeah, that's a little bit about me.
It's a compliment for for me than for Jen, but that we are twins separated by 20 years. I grew up Methodist, and then, you know, in a wonderful Christian family, went to church, did all the did all the things filled all the fields, and went to college. And at the end of my freshman year, went to a retreat to learn how to learn to lead Bible studies for the campus ministry I was part of. And I got there and I was like, these people like love Jesus.
This is this is something that is more than I've experienced. And so I'm sure I heard the gospel over those years. But that was the point in my life that it really connected and I went home after our camp and I just started to read God's Word and it just came alive. And that's that was really so we have walked similar paths in that way.
So I guess catch us up from that point. How did you because you're not from around here, are you? Nope, I'm from Ohio. Okay, from the north.
Yes. So my husband is a physical therapist. Also, we got we met in physical therapy school, we got married two weeks after we graduated.
His dad went to grad school at Duke, and they lived in North Carolina for a little while. And my husband did a rotation, a clinical rotation at a trauma center. And he so he was looking for jobs, kind of in the south at a trauma center, and he got hired at the hospital here. And then I ended up getting hired here too.
And that's kind of just work brought us down here. And then a few years after we moved down here, we got connected to our church, we were on the launch team. And I think that was a catalyst for me personally, with my faith, because somebody asked me why. And I said there were so many deep believers on the launch team, where I looked at them and the way they walked with God, the experiences they had been through. And they were just inspiring to me the way they were all in for Jesus. So yeah, and we moved away for a few years.
We've been back since December 2019. And about three years ago, I started an online ministry, which is kind of a crazy story. I, you know, the time we were away, it was kind of a wilderness season for me. And the Lord really built up my faith in him. And that's when I started consistently reading the Bible, studying the Bible as a mom kind of in this phase of life. And then during 2020, I was off work for six months, and just like dove deeply into the Word. And just was learning a ton about prayer, about studying the Word about just all the spiritual disciplines. And then I felt the Holy Spirit just burdened me, probably about, you know, three and a half years ago or so, of doing more in ministry.
That was kind of like the the phrase in my mind. And so I had tons of friends praying for me, like, what does that mean? And I thought maybe it's something with our church, you know, maybe not even working for the church, but volunteering in the things that I was most passionate about at the time, this is probably two things I'm still very passionate about is just deeper discipleship, like really calling people to be all in with Jesus and their faith, because I have I had lived the half-hearted Christian life and the pre-Christian life. And then finally hit a point after I had kids where I just went, I was like, you can have everything, Lord, you know, I'll do I'll go like we say, when we baptize people, I'll go wherever you asked me to go. And I'll do whatever you asked me to do, and actually meant it, you know, it was life changing for me over the last several years.
So that's what I want for other people, too. And then the other thing was parents being the primary disciple makers of their kids. So I thought, you know, I had a few conversations, I thought, and there were I told, I told the Lord, I said, you need to open the door, because I'm not going to walk through it if it's not open, and no doors open, you know, with our church, and that's okay. I had some conversations, and I felt really like at peace. And then I had a conversation with a friend about YouTube. of all things, and blogging, and the Lord was like, this is where we're going. We're, you know, digital discipleship and digital evangelism. And it's funny, because I was like the girl who casually posted family photos on social media. And it wasn't really your gig. No, not, you know, I'm a millennial, still.
And I'm sure, you know, Gen Z, Gen Alpha, they're more into the social media stuff. So I've learned a lot over the last three years. But the Lord is just, I just kind of keep saying yes, and walking forward, and he keeps opening doors. And you've been a huge person for that, too. And I think I told you before you asked me to speak at the Oasis conference last year, it was like the week before, and I was praying, Lord, you know, this way, I didn't ask you the week before.
You didn't? Wait, what do you mean? Not the week before the conference? Right? Yeah, yeah. Just to clarify, the week before I was praying before we met. Right. Yes, no, not the week before. Wow.
That would have been too much for me. But I just wanted to do something for the women in my city, you know, in my church. Absolutely. Well, we'll come back to that. When we come back, I want to tell I want you to tell about your ministry, the name of it and a little bit more about that.
And then we have a lot more to cover. So if you're out there and you want to call in the numbers 866-348-7884. We'll continue this conversation with Jen Crowder.
Be right back. I'm here with Jen Crowder. And when we left off, we were talking a little bit about your online ministry and what how that came about. And tell us the name of that. Where can we find that, Jen?
Yeah, so it's called She is Emboldened. And I kind of when I was thinking of the name, I just knew I love it. I just love it.
I want it. I just knew I wanted to encourage people in their faith. And so, you know, the verse that it's from Acts 413, and it's Peter and John, and they're meeting with the high priest, and they it's the line that says, oh, man, now I gotta find it when they saw their boldness, and that they were kind of like uneducated.
Common men. And it says they knew they had been with Jesus. And that's how I want to be. I want to have a boldness that comes from the Spirit for the gospel. But I also want to spur other people on in that, you know, and just kind of like ignite their the flame of their faith, as Scripture says, as well. So yeah, I'm kind of the hub for all my stuff is on sheismbolden.com, the website.
So there's, there's writing, there's free resources. And we have a YouTube channel where I do interviews and solo videos as well. I'm actually having a kids discipleship series I'll be doing in January. I'm excited to put that out. My husband's going to be on an episode with me. We're going to be talking about a philosophy of kids discipleship.
So what else? Oh, and if you if you go to the website, and you join my email list, I'm doing kind of special theology emails for the people on my email list. And I always put out like podcasts that are helpful books and favorite resources too. So that's kind of what I'm doing online and on Instagram. I guess I'm really active on Instagram too.
It's the handles at sheismbolden. I love your newsletters. In fact, the one you just sent out this week already listened to the Jackie Hill Perry interview, and a link to one of the John Tyson, I think vivification mortification, whichever one it was, when I when I pulled it up, I already listened to this, but you have so much good stuff on there. And so I think we I think our culture, we want resources, but we want resources from people that we can trust. And especially if you're a Christian, you want to, you know, resources, like the world swims in the sea of information, and you what is true, what is not what's going to help me what's going to confuse me.
And so to find somebody who's putting those resources together, and it has a voice of truth in the midst of midst of all the cultural things that are going around. But I want to ask you because you have some ebooks. Tell me about your ebooks.
I've actually got a few, but the one that you're probably that I sent you, Alicia, what was that, like, probably a year ago? Yeah. So it was a series on gender, faith, gender and sexuality, theology of interacting with non believers.
So it's a four part series. And that was something that came out years ago, I kind of did a deep dive into what it what is a biblical view of this? How do we interact with people? How do we navigate conversations about this topic? Because it's so divisive. It's so divisive in our culture.
There's a lot of fear as far as the Christian community when it comes to this conversation of LGBTQ stuff and all the things. So yeah, it's a it's 52 pages. And I probably could have made it longer. But at the end of every ebook, there's about like five to 10 book recommendations to to do a deeper dive, because I really want it to be a launching point for people and for them to do read the word and there's lots of scripture in there and then read these resources. And kind of learn for yourself too. It's just, it's so important. A it's how we learn better than if someone just feeds us information.
So I've got that one. I've got some downloads for scripture, memory and conversations for kids that parents can do with their kids. And it's all based off what I've done with my kids.
It's basically we do something right now we're memorizing the attributes of God. I'm actually hoping I can put together kind of a formal resource. I'm excited about it that parents can use. That parents can use with their kids.
That'd be awesome. Some scripture to memorize discussion questions. I'm really big about kids and discussion. And I help in the threes class at our church and they can do the discussion questions and they do awesome at it.
So parents don't underestimate your kids. So yeah, there's there's several free printables on there. There's lots of other things too. So Well, let's, let's steer in the direction of that conversation around the topic. Um, you mentioned it already, but kind of navigating as believers, our culture and our relationships in the church, outside of the church relationships with unbelievers around the topic of gender identity, LGBTQ, all of those issues.
You have done a lot. It sounds like you were thinking and writing about this before it became a topic that so many people are thinking and writing and talking about. And I don't know that we're thinking, writing and talking about it very well. Um, in the church, outside the church. So given that you have really spent a lot of time praying through this, I would like to ask you just to lead us in a discussion about what you've learned, what you feel like the world needs, what you feel like the church needs. Um, what are your lead us, lead us, Jen? I will do my best.
Yeah. So, you know, I'm, it kind of started my research was just, I need to know for myself, what is a biblical way to handle this conversation and what conversation specifically about how do we, man, I guess. What is the right way to speak truth about this topic in a way that honors Christ, you know, and that's not easy. And I know I've, one of our pastors taught on how all of us kind of gravitate towards one of these two spectrums. You're either more kind of go hard on truth and focused on truth, but low on grace. You're the person who's high on grace, low on truth. So you do kind of have to know that for yourself, but truly Jesus exemplifies both.
We see that. I talk about this in the eBooks, but you know, a lot of people like to argue over Jesus having meals with people because you have one camp who's like, Jesus was totally cool with everything. Like Jesus is my homeboy mentality. He's fine with sin.
Do whatever you want. It's like, we know that's not true. He's God. God is holy. He can't, he can't embrace sin. There is a penalty for sin.
We know that's not true. And then the other side makes it seem like all he was doing when he was having a meal with them was condemning them. We know that's not true because the Pharisees were upset that Jesus was eating with these people and that's what they would have done.
They would have spent the entire time condemning them for their sin, telling them how terrible they were. And so I think Jesus is one of the best people. Jesus and Paul are the two people in the Bible who just do this the best, in my opinion. Jen, I mean, what is the cross? It's where truth and mercy, grace meet. You have absolute truth of who we are in our sin meets the absolute grace and love of God. So you know that the cross is where we see that displayed, like literally displayed in the body of Christ, broken for us. Yeah, that's good.
That's good. Um, so yeah, I, and I think what I had seen, what Jesus does is he, he starts with relationship and he starts with himself. And then he gets to giving people a vision for what it looks like to live in the kingdom, the original vision that God had for humanity. And, and sin and where there is sin and calls, he does call for people to change. A lot of times, like Zacchaeus, he's like my favorite guy, Jesus didn't say anything to him. It was just being with Jesus that he wanted to change. That's a great one.
I love Zacchaeus. I love the woman at the well, because Jesus interacts with her. He reveals his identity. He draws out her identity and he changes her.
And then she runs off as the first missionary that we see in the book of John. So we'll come right. We'll be back in just a minute and we'll pick up on this conversation. So Jen, I'm going to pose a few questions as we delve a little bit deeper into this topic around gender identity, LGBTQ. How do we engage people with the gospel? Where's, what are your anchors in this conversation?
What are you know, if, if there are several things that you've learned, are there several mistakes we make or where, where the pitfalls lead us in that way? Yeah, I think what I, I had, there was this disconnect because I observed how Christians were talking about this topic or how they were handling it. And it was, it seemed like it was either fear avoidance of people in this community or kind of open, openly condemning from a distance, you know? And I read the Bible and like we talked about earlier, and I was like, I don't think that is the way the Bible shows us to interact with non-believers. And we were just talking, Alicia, about the importance of, well, A, it's a little bit of young life where you earn the right to be heard. And I think it's really important for Christians to have integrity when it comes to sharing the gospel with non-believers. I mean, it's so, so important that you, you do what you say you're, you say you're going to do.
You are true to your word. You're a person that is, that is helpful, that exemplifies the fruits of the spirit. People can tell, they don't want to receive a message from someone who's not exemplifying the character of Christ. And so sometimes you have to start, number one is start on yourself before you decide to share truth with people.
But now I got to figure it out. It's too easy for people to say, well, Jen, I hear you, but look at your life and you're derailed from the beginning. If you have these gaping things that you're overlooking in your own life and then you're, you know, trying to help somebody else. But maybe we're even starting at the wrong place. Yeah.
Yeah. And I think, A, people are more open to conversation than you think they are. And I just want to say, don't pay attention to the stuff online and what you see from people in this community, because I have close friends and family members in this community and they are, they will listen and they will talk.
And we can talk about how we disagree and respectfully. But it really it doesn't based on what the Bible says about interacting with nonbelievers and sharing the gospel is we start with the gospel before we start with calling people to change their behavior. You know, we're almost skipping a step when we start with the sins of nonbelievers. And there is a difference in how we handle sin that of a believer that we're in community with versus a nonbeliever in their life. And what I really want people to know is that the world just needs Jesus desperately. And so when we are too fearful or we avoid this community, people in the LGBTQ plus community, or we openly condemn them, we miss an opportunity to share Christ with them. And I know people get nervous. And sometimes when we start with the love of God in the gospel, people get nervous that we're minimizing sin and we're not doing that because we know that the word says that sin steals, kills and destroys. I was talking about that with my kids with whatever.
I think we're talking about Samson. We were talking about what sin does. And so we don't want people to embrace sin.
We know it's not good for them. But when you look at the overarching story of scripture, it starts with a good and loving God and his perfect vision for humanity before sin comes into the world. And so when we start these conversations with people, we start with the goodness of God. We start with the love of God. I mean, John Tyson is still my favorite person who's described the gospel. And he starts with you were made on purpose for a purpose by a loving God and your sin separated you from God.
But he's done everything necessary to reconcile you to him. And he when you put your faith in what Jesus has done through his death and resurrection, you get a new life. You get the spirit of God put in you. You have a new identity, you know, as a son, as a daughter in the kingdom of God.
And you will reign forever with God in glory. I mean, you tell people that. And the the narrative of secular culture doesn't have a powerful story like that. No.
And so Christians, I just like plead with you. We need to tell a better story. Tell the more beautiful story, I think is the way several people have put it.
Yes. And I think if if we personally if we experience the love of God for ourselves, we we spend time in the word and prayer and spend time with our father. That love is going to overflow to the people around us. And so it's not going to feel like work when you're sharing your faith with people. But I just see this desperate need for the world for Christ.
And we've got we've got work to do, you know, in representing him to the world. We were talking at the break, a book I read a few years ago is called Messy Grace. But, you know, his whole point is and he was raised in a family where both of his parents turned out to be gay. They divorced and and he became a believer during that time. And it was it was really insightful into the community and the support they had for each other and kind of gave me a lot of compassion.
And because I think when we think it's us and them in any kind of any any socioeconomic, you know, another ethnicity, we start to judge differently. But, you know, he just painted a beautiful picture. But then when he became a believer, how he navigated that. But the bottom line of that book was people don't need us to change their behavior. They need Jesus. Jesus, when Jesus comes in, the Holy Spirit is is the one who changes and convicts and moves that person to a different place. And it is doing the same in all of us. But I think we start at the wrong door.
Exactly what you said. When we start with you're a terrible person and God actually hates you. We haven't started at the place that God starts in scripture or even God hates your sin. And while that that's true and you should go into these conversations, repenting and confessing your sin before the Lord and on your knees in prayer before you're I mean, calling out the sin in anyone's life. But I mean, it's like I was reading Galatians five and it's verse 16. And Paul says, he says, but I say, walk by the Spirit and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. And that's what you're saying, Alicia, is the Spirit is the one who does the work.
And it really is. Even in the church, if we are just more focused on behavior modification, then we are a a feeling of the Spirit and walking by the Spirit. We are not giving people a biblical view of discipleship and we're not giving a biblical view of evangelism either. Well, we're training them to moralism. Right. That's exactly right. Your behavior modification is what makes you acceptable to the Lord, which is couldn't be more opposite.
You know, but we do add it once we know Christ and we have the Spirit, we walk in the Spirit and our lives are transformed. But to get one before the other is sometimes a fatal mistake. Absolutely.
Yes. Well, as far as you know, how how do you personally have how's this look for you personally? How do you interact with people? How do you have these conversations? Tell me some of the conversations you've had and what what that's been like. Yeah, well, I before I wrote the e-book series on this, I was like, I don't feel right speaking into this conversation without talking to people in the LGBTQ community. And I do have good friends and, you know, in my life. And then I also so I talked to I didn't this time before I wrote the e-book, I actually talked to somebody I had never met before who was probably a little more antagonistic to Christianity. And I was connected to her through a mutual friend. And so we literally did a blind FaceTime call and I just said, hey, I'm writing about this.
And let me ask you, like, a few questions. I asked her her spiritual background. I think the majority of people in the LGBTQ plus community grew up and have a spiritual background. And that's my I mean, our pastor told us that and I've used that so many times with people. Hey, tell me your spiritual background. I did that with a friend the other day and it led to a 45 minute conversation about what Christians believe, what she believed. You know, she's kind of a spiritual person.
That's a great place to start. What is your spiritual background? But with the girl, I was blind FaceTiming. I said, hey, you know, and we talked about the Bible. She was kind of taught to not trust the Bible and that's not reliable by her parents.
And you can kind of do whatever you want to do. And I asked her, I said, you know, the my church community would probably mostly be not affirming. And do you think it's possible to have good relationships with Christians who aren't affirming as someone who's gay? And and she thought about for she thought about it for a minute. And she said, I think it I think it can be. And I put like airbags around it, you know, like this is someone who because she loved Jesus. She was all about Jesus because she thinks Jesus is is kind and he he's accepting and, you know, it's half the story kind of. But and I said, if they kind of exemplify the characteristics of Jesus, do you think you could be in relationship with somebody like that? And she said, I think I could, you know, and and I think so often we just assume people will hate us because we're Christians. And unfortunately, other Christians have given us a bad name.
Right. And so it's up to you, you know, kind of boots on the ground believers to show people what it looks like to walk with Jesus and to be a follower of Jesus, because they've had so many and she had to so many hurtful experiences with believers. Not about it had nothing to do about simply giving truth. It was kind of added on with hateful speech or kind of moving away from or shunning or, you know, hateful comments online, in person and online, having bad experiences. And so I think we have work to do to show people that there are people who love the Lord, who can display the love of Christ to others while still holding to, you know, Orthodox Christian ethics. Yeah, that's a good word.
Rather than maybe be a keyboard warrior where you just blast people. I mean, I think that's what happens a lot. And so then we get those stereotypes of different groups and we write them off before we ever meet a person. And so relationships are tremendous. God was relational.
That's why he created us. So we'll be right back. From Love Worth Finding, here's Adrienne Rogers with a treasure from the Word. Welcome back to Truth Talk Live. We are excited about this final segment today, and we want to talk about some issues around deeper discipleship. So in our earlier segment, I told our audience that Janice created, she's founded a ministry called She Is Emboldened. You can find that as sheismbolden.com. It has links to her Instagram. She blogs. She writes about parenting, discipleship.
She has e-books that you can download a wealth of information and resource. And she just has a heart for Jesus, which is my favorite thing about her. But we have in common just a deep love for discipleship and deeper discipleship.
And so let's just have a conversation about that, because I think that's something that we both have in common. Just we look at the church and we look at people and we we just know that they're made for more. They're made for deeper relationship with Christ and each other and more peace and hope and joy and transformation.
And and we you know, we we want that for other people. And so tell me a little bit about how you see that played out in the church or what do you what do you see? Yeah, I think defining discipleship is helpful because it's kind of a church word that we throw around a lot, but we may not be able to like a lot of words we say in the church.
What does that look like practically? And to disciple just means to teach. And so as far as our context, we're teaching about it comes right out of the Great Commission. Yes. Make disciples, teaching them to obey all that commanded. Yeah.
Yeah. And we're we're teaching them the way of Jesus. We're teaching them what the word says. We're teaching them what does it look like to be a Christian, you know, and follow Christ.
And so I think people need taught a and and there's there's obviously you can swing too far either way on this, but you have to start with the word. I mean, that was revolutionary for me with the depth of my faith and my spiritual life. And hearing from God through the Holy Spirit is it's always when I'm in the word. I mean, the it's the Bible is not just a book. It was written by God. It's your it's our connection to God.
That's right. It is the living connection to God. And we are so and this is like just to insert a we have to be so careful about what we allow to enter our minds, like what we read, what we watch, what we listen to. It's interesting the way humans are made. We're so we have an ability to be formed for good or for bad. And so we want to be formed by the word.
Right. And by the spirit. And so that that takes knowing, not just reading the Bible, because that used to be me. You know, I read it and probably some of you are like this, like I read it, I got nothing out of it.
But great. Did it, you know, and learning. I mean, Jen Wilkin, women of the word is like a fantastic to know the context. Like, what are we talking about? What is the purpose of this?
I love her two questions. I do these with my kids. What does this tell us about God? And what does what does this tell us about us?
You know, humanity. And so that's a great resource if you haven't read it. But because you can know how to read the Bible the same way that your pastor studies for his sermons or you see these women who teach the Bible, you this is accessible to you. Like you can learn this so that you don't have to get scripture second hand.
I mean, that's huge. Reading the Bible for yourself is so important, not just listening to podcasts, not just listening to, you know, sermons, but because what happens is we forfeit the Holy Spirit's ability to speak to us through the word when we're only listening to someone else's kind of what the Spirit has told them. I totally see the analogy is like, it's the difference between you're the person who watched the movie or hearing someone else's version of the movie, but they were the one that watched it and you never watched it. It's just such a different experience.
I mean, we can all relate to that clearly. So first, it's knowing how to read the Bible and then it's knowing how to listen to the Spirit as you read. So prayerfully reading scripture and having a heart that's ready to hear from God because he is ready to speak to you and into your life.
He has good work for you to do. He has reminders for who you are in Christ and who he is. And so come to the word prayerfully expecting to hear from the Spirit, I think is huge. And then the third part, I think, which a lot of us kind of need, the more you read the Bible and the more you have other people teach you this, it's I read it, but how do I apply this to my situation in life?
Or I have this problem or I have this crossroads in my life. How do I look to scripture to know what to do? So I feel like those kind of facets of discipleship are so important. And then just teaching people how to pray.
And I mean, I'm teaching the kids in my three-year-old class at church. You know, even the acts model of prayer, because they don't, when we say, hey, does anybody have any prayer requests? They're like, they don't know what a prayer request is. So I'm like, hey, is there something you can thank God for today? Is there something you want to ask God's help for today?
You know, is there a sin that you could confess? And I'm like, hey, how about we ask God to help us obey our parents, you know, and just like for prayer. The biggest way I learned how to pray is listening to people who are comfortable talking to the Lord and just knowing, oh, there's an intimacy there. There are certain themes praying through scripture, I think is probably the most powerful form of prayer, in my opinion, and using that to frame your prayers. But I think what I want people to know is if you think the Christian life is boring, like there's more for you.
Absolutely. I mean, so many people think like, you know, Christianity is I go to church and I do good things and I don't do certain things. And there is a dynamic life that the Lord has for you when you are led by the Spirit. And yeah, I just want people to know that I want Christians to know that I want non-Christians to know that. So that's kind of my heart on deeper discipleship.
Yeah, I agree with all that. I do believe that somehow in the church, we just think that's going to happen. Like people are going to come into our church, they're going to sit in our pews, they're going to go home, they're listening to sermons, maybe even go to their community group.
And their hearts are just going to be drawn to God through his word and in prayer. And and it's like anything else. You know, if I decide I want to be a basketball player, somebody's going to have to show me how do you shoot the ball? How do you dribble?
You know, where do you stand on the inbounds line? But I think a lot of this is is just needing to spend that time actually pouring into people and helping them know how to walk with the Lord. Like to model it, but show them in the word exactly what you're saying. Like, well, you can read this passage, but first pray, like spend two minutes just asking for the Lord to show you what he has for you.
Maybe write down something you're thankful for. Maybe write down a burden as you start to read the word. And then read it and try to, you know, try to look for the themes, try to, you know, so that you can interpret it in the way it was intended to be. And then at the end, more than just like, you know, what's my takeaway or what do I apply? Write a prayer to the Lord about how you love him more because of this scripture.
But that's just not intuitive to everybody. And I love your point that, you know, there's mentorship and then there's, you know, friendship and then there's discipleship. But I think discipleship has to be grounded in God's word. Yeah, we do a lot of things and we call it discipleship and they can be good things. But we're we have to start with the word as the foundation. At least that's my that's my humble opinion. But what Jen Wilkins says, the heart can't love what the mind doesn't know. And so that's our that's our starting starting point with that.
So, yeah. And I would say if you're somebody, if you're listening, this is I want to put this out of the at the conference, too. If you're listening, you're like, I don't really know if I feel super comfortable reading the Bible. Like I see other women who seem to know how to read and teach the Bible, but I'm not really there. Just don't be afraid to ask for help because I have had people sit in my small group for months and they're too afraid to say, hey, I don't really know if I know. Like, I want to learn because it seems like everybody else has it all together and knows all the things which we know isn't true. It's kind of like a lie from the enemy, you know. But it's true.
People are nervous. And if they do, at one point they didn't. You know, everybody starts at zero. Absolutely. So don't be afraid to ask for help. Like I said, pick up Jen Wilkins book, Women of the Word.
And you can do this. I actually do have some Bible out. There's an article about three simple Bible outlines that anyone can do on the She Is Emboldened website.
And it has a free printable too for that as well. So we're looking forward to we'll get we'll just go ahead and give a little plug next March 29th in North Carolina. If you're anywhere close, we're doing a women's conference, which is about discipleship and evangelism and so many different things. But Jen, you spoke as one of the main speakers last year at our conference and you spoke on Rahab. And you told how your dad sent you to school for dress up day in a Rahab costume because he didn't know that Rahab was a prostitute. Sunday school.
That's right. But, you know, how how do you feel like God is using you in some of those forums? Like, I just think it's neat when you find a spiritual gift and you get to walk in it.
It sounds like God is using you in lots of different ways. But what does that look like? Oh, man. Yeah. Please come to the conference. I want to talk up the conference for a minute. Not just because, you know, I spoke last year, but I've told everybody it was such a spirit filled day. Like it was not a flashy conference.
There was not extra hype. But the Holy Spirit was there. And looking around and seeing women from their 20s to 80s, like I was in the marriage breakout session.
And you've got somebody married less than a year and somebody married 60 plus years. It was just a beautiful day. So please come. Yes. March 29th. Man walking in my giftings.
Oh, that's what I forgot to say. When, you know, when the Lord kind of called me into ministry, essentially about three and a half years ago, I had been learning all this stuff, you know, about spiritual disciplines, the Bible, the Lord, prayer, all the things. And what shifted in my mind was instead of just learning it for myself, it was almost like there was a shift into what it would look like to teach this to somebody else. It was a distinct shift. And when I when I read something, when I studied something, I was thinking about it like I would teach it.
That was crazy. I think I've always been a teacher. I mean, I've been a volleyball coach. I've taught in physical therapy schools. But yeah, opportunities to teach. I've done community Bible studies.
I'd like to do that again now that my youngest is about a year and a half. I've gotten to speak at a few conferences and teach online and in person. And thanks to you for giving me the opportunity to teach to the women in my city, because there is nothing better than going to church the next day and seeing somebody say, hey, that really encouraged me. Or I felt the Lord and, you know, just to spur on the women in your church to follow Jesus and be encouraged and be built up in the word. So and then I'm I don't know, I'm always like my friends or I have the best friends. Hey, they pray for me, but I'm always sending them stuff and what I'm learning. Oh, your idea. They bear with me.
Yeah, absolutely. Well, those are great friends to have. Well, I'm glad to have you as a friend, Jen. And I look forward to what God's going to do in the future through you. And he's always he's always working.
So we just give the glory to Jesus. We'll catch you on the next round. Thanks so much, Lisa. Thanks for having me. Absolutely.
